Short answer: The pressure in Hollywood to conform to certain standards of beauty is very real, and I think it sucks.

It’s an issue that affects everyone in entertainment, but it’s a very gendered issue. You see far more male character actors who are heavy, pockmarked, wrinkled, or otherwise outside the ideal beauty standards than women. While there are male actors who have to look like super heroes, there are also a lot of roles for men who are out of shape, ugly, or old. There are very few equivalent roles for women.

Women in Hollywood are already vying for a smaller number of roles, and we suffer from the expectation that we be, above all else, ornamental. While a beautiful actress may win an Oscar for gaining weight and “bravely” appearing unattractive in a film, she had to be beautiful and slim to establish her career, and we expect her to show off how hot she really is when she struts the red carpet.

I believe in telling stories populated with real people, and I find it maddening that women don’t get to see reflections of themselves in films and TV unless they are “conventionally” attractive and under 40. Yes, there are exceptions to this, and they should be celebrated, but by and large the standard is still strongly in favor of thin, pretty, and young. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on actresses, resulting in a bevy of leading women who are constantly asked on red carpets what diets they followed to fit into their dresses and who get needles jabbed into their faces to try to hide the natural signs of aging. Even after a pregnancy it’s a race to see how fast they can show up at an event at their pre-pregnancy weight. It’s a sickness that is so pervasive many people don’t even question it, and it’s not healthy for anyone.

This entry was posted by jbc
on Wednesday, August 14th, 2013 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Tumblr.
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